


Snapshots of the Night Before

by mitzirocker



Category: Twitch Plays Pokemon (Let's Play)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-03
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2019-09-23 13:06:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17080862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitzirocker/pseuds/mitzirocker
Summary: The night before the end of the world.





	Snapshots of the Night Before

The mighty trainer crept towards his prize. The guards had left and the way to the lab was clear. It was as dark as a cave, but he knew every nook and cranny of this building. He inched along the floor, placing every step carefully; any sudden noise would alert the entire town. He stopped at the door, felt for the keypad. The door was locked, but he’d memorised all the codes. He had to try three before a beep sounded and the door slid open.

One of the windows was open, and a cool evening breeze fluttered through the lab. Moonlight filtered inside, and he had to blink a couple of times before his eyes focused. When they had, he saw them at last. Three pokéballs lay on the central table, the light glinting off them. He licked his lips, and took a step forward.

“Hello, Blue,” said his grandfather, as every light in the lab switched on.

Blue whirled around; Professor Oak was sitting on a chair just behind the door. He smiled and shook his head. “Hoping to get an extra night’s training?“

“I wasn’t gonna steal one! I just wanted to see what they were-”

“And convince Red to take the weakest one?” Oak pushed himself up. “You’ll get to see what they are tomorrow.” He glanced at the clock. “It’s nearly nine, and I know that’s after your curfew.”

“But-”

“ _Bed_ , Blue. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.” He gestured to the door. “If you sleep in, Red will get to pick the best of the bunch!”

Blue looked up at his smiling, impassable grandfather. “Fine,” he grumbled, and sloped out of the lab.

Once he was certain that Blue had left the building, Oak stretched and yawned. Never mind Blue, he really should get to bed. The boy might still come back, but – no, there he was, getting yelled at by his sister in front of their house. She frogmarched him inside and slammed the door shut. Yes, it was unlikely that his grandson would try to break in again that night.

Oak closed the window and took his lab coat off. He hung it up beside the door and was about to leave when he caught sight of the pokéballs. One last check wouldn’t hurt the pokémon inside, and it would be good to know about any potential problems.

The bulbasaur was asleep already, and the squirtle was dozing off. The charmander was still jumping around, but a quick play of jigglypuff song got her to settle down too. Oak patted her pokéball. They all had good potential, but the charmander in particular seemed destined for greatness.

Images of Blue and his charizard playing in his mind, Oak turned off the lights and left the lab.

* * *

In the grasslands outside of Viridian City, a young pidgey found a safe spot in the tall grass to spend the night. In the Safari Zone, a nidorino helped bring some adventurous nidorans back to the herd, and a venomoth flew away from its tree to start the night’s hunting. In Silph Co., a confused lapras tried to comfort her owner as they hid from Team Rocket. In an abandoned power plant, Zapdos scared off a group of curious humans. In a dust-covered pokéball lost on a roof, an eevee waited for someone to find it.

And in the depths of Mt Moon, Chaos slept.

* * *

In the back of his mind, Bill knew that he shouldn’t be up this late. But there was nothing he needed to do tomorrow that he couldn’t do now, and the PC system always needed updating. At least that annoying zigzagoon had vanished.

He caught sight of the date on the monitor. Something about it looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite remember what – 

Oh.

Alice would have started her pokémon journey today.

He tried to go back to work after that, but he couldn’t shake the image of her bouncing down the lighthouse steps, ready to have an adventure. Eventually he sighed, put the PC on sleep mode, and went to check on the eevees.

He kept the eevees on the third floor of the lighthouse, far away from any fragile computer equipment. Normally the entire floor was a riot of noise and fur, but this late at night the eevees had collapsed into adorable snoring piles. Bill looked over them. He’d have given one to Alice, he thought. Maybe the one that kept trying to escape, or the one that had stolen his burrito the other day. Nothing seemed to be wrong, until he looked over at the evolved eevees.

There were only two there at the moment. The glaceon was sleeping peacefully, but the espeon was pacing all around the pen. Bill watched as its circles grew tighter and more frantic. He snapped on his gloves and was about to go in to try to calm it down, when it stopped, looked up, screamed, and fainted.

Bill rushed into the pen, but got hit in the leg by an ice blast from the panicking glaceon. The floor erupted into high-pitched squeals as the eevees tried to see what was happening and the glaceon desperately nuzzled its friend. He reached for one of the pokéballs on his belt, and caught sight of the espeon’s eyes.

Bill spent the rest of the night calming down the glaceon, failing to get the eevees to go to sleep, watching over the espeon as it lay in the healing device, and chasing that damned zigzagoon out of the computer network. He finally fell asleep at the keyboard at seven in the morning. He dreamed of Alice, and a swarm of zigzagoon-eevee hybrids, and an espeon whose eyes flashed an impossibly bright shade of purple.

* * *

Years later, Bill found out that his espeon had not been alone. All over the world, at that exact instant, millions of psychic pokémon screamed out in fear. The next morning, hundreds saw Mew flee Kanto, accompanied by hordes of lesser psychics. Every psychic human in the world, from a six-year-old channeller in New Bark Town to the strongest member of the Kanto Elite Four, had the exact same vision of a huge, unstoppable entity flooding into their world. Dozens of legendaries hid. In their prisons, the old gods stirred.

In Pallet Town, Red woke up in the middle of the night. He sat up, looked around, realised that he still had several hours to wait before he got his first pokémon, and went back to sleep.

Just before he dropped off, he thought he heard a voice.

_name?_

* * *

_asleep! the body’s asleep! how are we supposed to play if the body’s asleep?!_

**You do realise he’ll wake up in a few hours?**

_a few hours? we can wait that long no we can’t dude we've been waiting for much longer than that this is boring who wants to play voltorb flip_

In seconds, the Mob was back in its default state; holding a thousand different conversations and arguments with itself. One asked another one,  _what’s the catch?_  The idea swept through the Mob.

_what’s the catch there’s no such thing as a free lunch what do you want from us guy what do you want us to do_

**For the third time, there is no catch. You should try to keep your host alive, but otherwise you may do as you please. Besides, I thought you wanted to go on a pokémon journey.**

_pokémon yaaay we’re going on a pokémon journey we should pick cyndaquil we’re in kanto you moron we’re gonna be the very best like no one ever was it’s not about win or lose it’s the path we choose shut up_

_why_

_that’s a good question why is it letting us do this especially if it doesn’t want anything if we had a universe we wouldn’t let us in for nothing wouldn’t we already be in though that’s not the point hey you why are you letting us in if there’s no catch?_

**I’m curious, that’s all. I want to see what happens.**


End file.
